In 2003, Swiss photographic artist Jules Spinatsch launched his Surveillance Panorama Projects. Shot with network cameras—surveillance cameras that take still photos—these works examine human behavior and reveal the sometimes striking discrepancy between social pretense and social reality.

This book documents Vienna MMIX—the fourth installment in Spinatsch’s series—in which the artist trained his lens on the Vienna Opera Ball. At the ball, two cameras moved continuously in a grid pattern, taking photographs every three seconds. Arranged in a single sequence, ten thousand of these photos form a panorama that recreates the entire space while capturing only fragments of events. Volume I shows the images in chronological order as a continuous strip, each page representing one specific minute. Volume II features selected images, each documenting a moment of great intensity, intimacy, or fascination. The two essays in the set's third part explore the phenomenon of human perception and its transition in the age of media and surveillance technology.

The resulting book is both a beautifully produced collection of images and a piercing study of human behavior.

David Campany

, born 1967, is a freelance writer, curator, and artist. He teaches at London's University of Westminster, has edited a number of books, and contributes widely to journals and magazines.

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Wolf Singer

, born 1943, studied medicine and has been director of Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt (Main) since 1981. He is also co-founder of Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), the Brain Imaging Center (BIC), and of Ernst Strüngemann Institute (ESI).